THE
GREAT MAINE LAPTOP EXPERIMENT
Chris
Toy, Principal
Freeport (ME) Middle School
Maine is undertaking a bold experiment. The goal: Put Apple iBooks in the hands of every middle schooler across the state. In September, the first wave of 17,000 laptops were distributed to 7th-graders at 239 schools, including Freeport Middle School, where MiddleWeb diarist Chris Toy is principal. A strong proponent of Maine's Learning Technology Initiative, Chris will chronicle the laptop adventure for us.
Laptop
Diary #12
A Quick, Powerful Conference
You won't be surprised to learn that (for the second year in a row) the focus of last week's half-day Southern Maine Middle Level Conference was the Maine Learning Technology Initiative. It didn't last long, but it packed plenty of punch.
After some brainstorming, the organizing groups settled on the title STAYING CONNECTED: INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGY AT THE MIDDLE LEVEL. The success of this annual conference, now in its fifth year, is the result of four very effective organizations that collectively represent the bulk of the schools, teachers, and middle school administrators in this part of the state.
The conference attracted over 250 middle level educators as participants and presenters. The opening speaker, Dr. Mike Muir, started us off with a very engaging activity. Mike spoke to the group about how far we had all come since the original development of the MLTI idea, to the launching of the project, and now well into the first year of its implementation. Using all the multimedia capabilities of Powerpoint, he showed us teachers and students who started out as skeptics but quickly became comfortable, then enthusiastic about integrating technology into their classrooms.Following his comments and presentation, which took only 10 minutes, Mike asked the audience to use the building's laptop wireless network to log onto a website and fill out a short anonymous survey regarding the integration of technology in the curriculum.
Here's the twist. By the end of the evening, working online with three associates in Texas, Mike had collected and analyzed the survey results. His team generated all kinds of statistics about the 200 or so folks who filled out the questionnaire. His live demonstration really drove home the point that technology helped us see and understand what were were like as a group — while we were still gathered together!
Between Mike's opening remarks and his analysis at the end of the evening there were two concurrent sessions with 28 presentations. I presented at both sessions with John Lunt, our technology coordinator, so I missed out on some very interesting sessions. The topics covered quite a range: Discover ME, a web based educational program for Maine Studies; Virtual Field trips in the Maine Studies Classroom; Technology Tools for Math; Using Technology to Support Universal Design in the Classroom; Family Photo Stories; The MLTI first-year discussion panel; Teaching about the Holocaust; iMovie; Project Power-Technology Integration Made Easy: iBooks in the 8th Grade; Marco Polo's K-12 Lessons Aligned to Maine's Standards; and Big RATS Bring on the Technology (Related Arts Teachers).
One concurrent session, "Effective Teaming with MLTI Laptops," was unusual — it included a team of middle school students, called the iTeam, who are trained as resources from teachers and students.
With the addition of a nice sit-down dinner, some donated door prizes by the sponsoring organizations, and some time to catch up with colleagues in other school systems, the late afternoon-early evening conference was a great success. It is one more example of how the educators in Maine are dedicating themselves and their resources for the success of this project. Much has been accomplished in a short half-year. And much remains to be done in the months ahead.
